Yesterday I returned from three hectic, exciting, unpredictable and incredibly enriching days of surveying in a set of rural villages in Eastern Region. Upon entering the main village, people appeared both fascinated by and skeptical of our presence, but I think we made a good impression--as evidenced by the swarms of children that followed us around. The children would start out staring at us in fear and wonderment, and--slowly, slowly--they would start gathering the courage to inch forward to us--or be pushed forward by some of the more belligerent ones. So I decided to try out some Twi:
"Ya frewo sen? Me fre Joe." (What is your name? My name is Joe.)
Children: -stunned silence-
"Madanfo?" (friend?)
Children: slowly smiling, inching forward. One, whom I shall deem "the ambassador", comes close enough, touches my sleeve, giggles and runs off.
This repeats with other children, until eventually all of them start swarming us, giving us high-fives, low-fives, thumbs-ups and even hugs. It was a really cute moment. And then we whipped out the Purell.
Over those three days we created listings for several villages and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. I had a wonderful time, and really enjoyed working with our team of enumerators, who I found quite dedicated. Of course, with all that interviewing, there were quite a few hilarious, awkward, unpredictable moments, that I must share a few (with pictures).
I decided to bring my camera along, but I had never really entered a situation where I would ask complete strangers if I could take their photos--along with the fact that I wouldn't be compensating them. But it actually turned out well, and many people asked for their pictures to be taken, along with their families. It was such a cool experience.
All of the following pictures were taken on my D60 with a fixed 35. Because we have limited bandwidth, I've uploaded these in a low-resolution format. In keeping with good form, all photos were taken with the express permission of the subject(s) or their parents in the case of children.
This is the enumerator I was with for the first two days, Frank, in action. Frank has commented on my previous post. :p
A woman, taking a break from preparing the afternoon meal, with her young son.
Meet Anthony Mensah. I believe he saw my camera and assumed I was a news reporter. He ran back into his house and whipped out a press pass from the New Times Corporation (The Ghanaian Times, today), dated from 1963, with a youthful portrait of himself that he was very proud of. The 1960s, Africa's decade of independence, with Ghana leading the way, must have been quite an exciting time to be a reporter, and I can only imagine the stories he covered during that time with Nkrumah and his grand visions. He also spent time in the army. Anthony asked that I take a portrait of him, and I happily obliged. Upon seeing it show up on my screen, he became immediately elated, which led to much of the village wondering what was going on and others becoming fascinated with the obruni with the camera. I was later awed by the possibility that I might have been only the second person to ever show him his self-portrait.
This Frank measuring one of our respondent's children's height. The children loved this part. And it was a nice, fun break for us. We found out later in the interview that the man we were talking to was actually the village chief. I was kind of stunned: normally you never talk directly to a chief (there's a linguist you talk to who then passes the word on to the chief, even if the chief is two feet away from you) and you never take pictures of him and his family. But he loved getting pictures taken of him and his family. Such a cool guy. He even had the patience to sit through our six and a half hour interview. Ironically, at about hour five of that interview, one of his subjects stormed onto the patio where we were interviewing to heatedly complain about being interviewed for five hours by another one of our teams. I think he was quite surprised to see that the chief had been sitting with us for five hours.
This picture was taken around 7.30am, before our respondent family headed off to market; here they're getting some, I believe, tomatoes, prepared for selling. Yo, we start our surveys early.
On the final day my interviews wrapped up a bit early so some of us walked up the hill, about 3/4 of a mile, to see the next village where another set of teams was working. This walk afforded many amazing views of the lush green hills of the Eastern Region. This is us descending the hill (I'm the one wearing the hat). Taken by Leah, a fellow RA.
After descending the hill we spent some more time in the village I worked in, with some of our enumerators playing pickup soccer with the local children. We drew a sizeable crowd, and Leah shot this amazing portrait of a child looking onwards. We spent an hour waiting for the bus. 
And then the bus got stuck in the mud as it was reversing. Turns out it wasn't a 4x4. I helped push it out--quite fun. Ghana. Oh Ghana. This shot taken by Leah--as I am joining the others in looking perplexed.
Today was our off day and a couple of us were brave enough to fend off our need for sleep and ventured up to Aburi, Adukrom, Asanema and Mamfe, all in the Eastern Region, but within a couple hours of Accra. It also helped that our house lacked both power and water today--even more incentive to get away from Accra. These towns are all in the foothills, and are, weatherwise, significantly cooler than Accra. Plus driving up their affords great views of Accra and nearby hills. So much green. Modes of transport included tros-tros, shared taxis and a dropping taxi with a driver who also kind of doubled as a guide. This shot is from the Aburi Botanical Gardens, a place the Brits used as a retreat during the colonial period.
The Asanema waterfall. So beautiful. There's actually a sign at the trailhead saying you have to call someone to ask for permission to enter. It provided a nice misty breeze to cool us off.
It also turned out that it was funeral day in all these towns we were visiting, so lots of people were dressed in fairly fancy, predominantly black traditional dress. Lots of loud music and what not. Interestingly, quite a few people saw me with my camera (I should note I was also wearing a kente-pattern shirt, which might have helped), and asked for their portraits to be taken! This is one of my favorites, as this guy was definitely dancing for my camera.
Such an amazing time so far. Work starts again tomorrow. Also, the plantains I was helping fry earlier? Definitely now crunchy plantain chips. But they go well with our apricot jam. Always look on the bright side of life.
1 comment:
Wow! that piece was quite comprehensive. I enjoyed every bit of it.
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